Lupe Fiasco Gets (Surprise!) A Little Too Ambitious For His Own Good

ARTIST: Lupe Fiasco TITLE: The Cool WEB DEBUT: Dec. 12, 2007 RELEASE DATE: Dec. 18, 2007

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: As on Food And Liquor, and leaving aside conceptual decisions like rapping “from the perspective of a cheeseburger,” Chi-town native Lupe’s still best when flowing over beats that could have been scratched together in a Brooklyn basement or Queens bedroom when he was supposedly listening to Eightball and MJG in junior high, like the amber-colored electric pianos of “Paris, Tokyo,” which sound lifted from the same ’70s sample stack Tribe was rifling through on Midnight Marauders, or the stabby ’90s underground dynamics and funk guitar lick of “Gold Watch.”

But since he’s a guy who’s a vocal fan of Linkin Park and who has publicly rubbished his indebtedness to the Native Tongues in favor of hardcore southern rap, most of The Cool is filled with funk-free new-school beats laced with characterless R&B hooks and Fiasco attempting a double-time flow his voluble mouth can’t handle. Or (worse), they’re “experimental” tracks where an overly ambitious Fiasco mistakes by-the-numbers mainstream rock moves for bold departures from the urban radio norm. The politically tinged “Hello Goodbye” is a rock tune, right down to Lupe grunting “huh!” over the karaoke-band guitar solo on the outro, but while we’re all for cross-genre fusions, aping the sound of late-’90s industrial/rap-rock is not a good look for such a clever dude.

THE BEST TRACK: After the aforementioned “Paris, Tokyo” and “Gold Watch,” the downcast “The Coolest” has somber strings and a piano plunking between the beat that reminds me why I loved the wistful “Kick, Push” so much, even if he still can’t resist rapping nonsense like “drink the tears from her eyes.” We know “wipe” would have been too easy, but c’mon now.